WP Editor to post meta – no paragraph tags

Hi, I’m trying to add a bibliography field to my post/edit page as a wp_editor() (rich text/HTML) field. However, when it gets saved as a post meta custom field, it all gets collapsed into one paragraph – italic formatting, links, and that sort of thing stick around because those get translated into <em> and <a> tags from the rich text, but <p> tags aren’t generated. How can I fix this so that I’m able to have bibliography items on separate lines?

Here’s my code:

add_action( 'edit_form_advanced', 'reference_editor' );
function reference_editor() {
	// get and set $content somehow...
	$settings = array( 'wpautop' => true, 'media_buttons' => false );
	wp_editor( get_post_meta(get_the_id(), 'references', true), 'references', $settings);
}

add_action( 'save_post', 'save_post', 10, 2 );
function save_post( $post_id, $post ) {
  if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_post', $post_id ) )
    return $post_id;

  update_post_meta( $post_id, 'references', stripslashes( $_POST['references'] ) );

}